First Time in the Back Country

Me lurking in the backcountry, literally.

I was thinking about certain parts of the mind as the backcountry, the mental places we go to when we are confounded by something, when we are seeking understanding of life's hardest moments, how those parts of the mind are beautiful, alien, mysterious places, sometimes hard to get to but usually satisfying when you reach them. Usually, but not always; the backcountry can be soothing, it can be peaceful, but it can also be a haunted and lonely place. I was thinking about how some people probably go to the backcountry more than others. Some perhaps go there frequently, some very rarely. Some people love the backcountry, others don't care for it. I was thinking about how in life everyone would have a first time they go there, a first time they are really challenged by some situation, or really hurt or stunned, perhaps by a death or some other kind of loss, or just by a very difficult decision that needs making. And so it would be dark at first. It would be like night. For some that might happen first when they're quite young, others might not go to the backcountry for the first time until adulthood. So that is what this is about. I don't create the boy but ask you to create, to picture him, in your mind. I know it looks long but it's barely more than 300 words. Still it may seem long. I don't usually explain these things but I figured I'd better explain this one at least. It's a draft. It isn't autobiographical.

First Time in the Backcountry 
Picture a boy

crouched in the reeds

watching the lake

they'd come to at night,

in the summer after the winter

in which he'd lost his leader

and only follower:

his dad and his dog.

Black and standoffish,

still and so lifeless,

not what he’d expected the lake.

From a black hill 
crowned with fire 
came a distant call

of his name and when

the speechless ghost

of his father appeared

to haunt the lake he left

the shore for the camp,

a tent, the night.

Crack of the next morning fishing,
with one sock on and sleep in his eye,

alone in a wavering morning light

he saw the surgeon’s window

on the body, saw the last ignorance
and glare of his father’s eyes

who had died without word or waking.

Soon he was pulling where it bled

to a river life from the lifeless lake

to drown in warm air his quarry,

whose stunned eyes he dimmed

with quick and certain blows of mercy,

hooked to a measure of spare line

and left to flutter indifferent in the shallows.

Returning with six cutthroat swinging

in his hook-slashed hand, 
peering into the backcountry glow

he saw the lake animated by the wake 
of a water bird since flown.

That night unheard the Perseids

slashed a rift in the lake-mirrored sky,

swept the surface like rain drops
on a windshield home. Was death,
like the stars soundless and far,

transformed by closer scrutiny

and light? No answer. Fine, he felt,

I am who is his silence.
Soon would come reports:

astronomers had witnessed their first

supernova. It was growing closer;

and he wondered, when it came, 
would he scatter and sweep the sky? 
Or flutter indifferent in the shallows?